Daniel Levin Becker & Panel: Dear McSweeney’s

McSweeney's Quarterly Concern has been printing issues since 1998, and sending them into the world with reckless faith. Now and then, the world writes back. In two decades and change, we've accumulated a heady archive of dispatches, pleas, confessions, treatises, ruminations, rants, raves, and the occasional misdirected customer service query. Collected here are one hundred installments from this sprawling many-to-one correspondence, including but not limited to musings on moths and mummies and macaroons, cats and armadillos and homicidal sea worms, and the arcana of Jerry Lewis's acting career. By turns poignant and absurd, these letters are a sparkling glimpse into the strange and unforgettable lives of McSweeney's readers. Featuring letters by Sarah Vowell, Brandon Hobson, R.O. Kown, Jonathan Lethem, Jenny Odell, Hanif Abdurraqib, Julie Klausner, Thao Nguyen, Ana Marie Cox, Jason Polan, and dozens more. Daniel Levin Becker is senior editor at McSweeney’s. He is the author of Many Subtle Channels (Harvard University Press, 2012) and What’s Good (City Lights Publishers, 2022), and translator of works by Georges Perec, Éric Chevillard, Michelle Grangaud, and Eduardo Berti, among others. He lives in Paris.